VAUGHAN, Ont. — The Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario (RCCAO) is calling on the Ontario government to take action to speed up utility locate responses in the province and has released its own six-point plan in a press release today.
“Contractors across the province are trying to catch-up with the backlog caused by Covid-19 and this heightened activity has resulted in an increase in demand for utility locates in many municipalities,” says RCCAO executive director Andy Manahan, in the release. “But this has been a chronic issue as contractors have complained for years that there are long delays for utilities such as gas companies and telecommunications firms to provide markings of where their underground services are located. In fact, a recent article in [the Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance’s publication] Ear to the Ground estimated that 85% of all locate requests are late.”
The RCCAO recently sent a brief outlining its proposed plan to improve the Ontario “One Call” system to the offices of Ontario Premier Doug Ford and the Minister of Government and Consumer Services, as well as 19 MPPs who are on the province’s Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs. To minimize the risk of severing a natural gas line, water main or other underground infrastructure such as telecom cables, the mandatory One Call system allows homeowners, construction contractors and other excavators to make one locate request to a call centre instead of separate calls to each utility.
The brief notes Ontario has a legislated deadline of five business days to respond to utility locate requests. However, over the years, the delivery of locates has been persistently late, with responses up to several weeks after the deadline has passed, says the press release.
“For larger projects where there are up to 10 different companies responding to a request, some of the locates expire by the time all the locates are received, necessitating a frustrating relocate request process,” reads the release.
The first recommendation of RCCAO’s proposed six-point plan is for the province to restructure the board of directors of the Ontario One Call system so that half of the 12 members are non-utility representatives such as excavators, municipalities and the provincial government.
“Presently, nine of the board members represent utility members. Concerns have been expressed that directors representing utilities are unwilling to prosecute fellow utilities. As the Ontario One Call board is dominated by utility company representatives, there is no incentive for these companies to levy fines against themselves for not following the legislated timelines,” reads the press release.
Manahan added: “Ontario needs significant improvement in response times for the delivery of utility markings, especially if we are depending on construction to be a leading sector in our recovery efforts. Implementing our six-point plan will reduce locate wait times for contractors and have a substantial and positive impact on helping them deliver timely and cost-effective construction services.”
